The Comitia Centuriata (Centuriate Committee) included both patricians and plebeians organized into five economic Classes (knights and senators being the First Class) and distributed among internal divisions called Centuries.

Membership in the Centuriate Committee required certain economic status, and power was heavily vested in the first eighteen Centuries; the Centuriate Committee was dominated by the First and Second Classes.

The 193 centuries were determined by wealth, and the richest centuries were also the smallest, so individual votes in these counted more heavily (when a majority of the 193 votes was reached, voting was stopped, so some of the largest centuries rarely got to cast votes).

Origin

In Latin centuria (from centum ‘hundred’) was used to refer to a group of 100, particularly a company in the ancient Roman army, made up of 100 men. Early usage of the English word carried the meaning ‘a hundred’, as in Shakespeare's ‘a century of prayers’ in Cymbeline. The ‘100 years’ sense dates from the early 17th century, when it was used as a shortened form of the phrase ‘a century of years’. A batsman who scores a century in cricket, a hundred runs, perpetuates the older sense. See also hundred